"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; but he ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... the deceased, but little is known of him. Letters found on his person prove his name to be W. Pfeiffer, and his residence Denver. His presence in Miss Moores house at a time so inopportune is unexplained. No such name is on the list of wedding guests, nor was he recognized as one of Miss Moore's friends either by Mr. Jeffrey or by such of her relatives and acquaintances as had the courage to enter the library ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... sorrow will embitter your joys ere the frost of age shall have cooled the blood or chilled the imagination; very soon, in a few years, perhaps, it will knock at the door of your soul; and you will be obliged to give this inopportune visitor admittance, to remain with you, perhaps, for the rest of your life. Among the young ladies of your acquaintance are there not some who are unhappy? And can you, without a voluntary illusion, convince yourself that youth is a preservative against misfortune? ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... foreseeing anything like what has been shown to him; and that there may be no possible mistake in the interpretation of the gesture, he invariably accompanies it by the phrase: "What a fool I am!" All will admit that if a man really believed himself the author of his discovery, he takes a very inopportune time to declare his impotence and his stupidity so distinctly. But taking none too kindly his avowal which, moreover, is but the proclamation of an indisputable truth, let us rather say that this act of humility is forced from him by ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... a distinguished manner). I repeat that I am afraid to be most inopportune. I would rather not have heard, but since I have, it's my duty to say so. When I arrived I knocked several times, but I presume you could not have heard ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... moment. Neither, however, knew of the other's passion, though each hoped as an innocent and youthful love will hope, and each trembled as each hoped. Nothing explicit had been said that evening; but much, very much, in the way of sympathy and feeling had been revealed, and but for the inopportune entrance of Julia and myself, all ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... talk nor play with her, it served her as a temporary refuge—as would a shelter until the rain was over—and Felix delighted in it because it kept Kling out of the way, the good-natured Dutchman having often spoiled a sale by what Felix called "inopportune remarks at opportune moments." ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... enthusiasm, but gave little overt trouble. In Quebec some, but not all, of the Nationalists opposed Canada's participation in the war, taking either the belated colonial view that it was Britain's part to fight the {318} Empire's wars, or the more logical but inopportune view that Canada should not fight in a war when she had had no part in shaping the policy that went before it. They claimed to stand where practically all Canadians had stood a generation before. They forgot that meanwhile the world, and Canada, had ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... neo-idealistic movement, which found the principal cause of social progress in the tendency of humanity to attain supreme development and perfection. Then there were the "narodnikis" who considered the "proletariazation" of the Russian peasant impossible and inopportune. There were also the various groups of Socialists who applauded the criticism that Bernstein made on the Marxian orthodoxy. So several deviations were made from the original theory; there were grave dissensions and interminable and bitter controversies. All this occupies a large part of "At the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... results. For every Hezekiah or Josiah, how many kings of the type of Ahaz or Manasseh had there been! The Jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to the house of David, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude it from his plan for their future government. He resolved to tolerate a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the compiler of the Book of Deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servant ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... exiles, and natives alike, who reside for any length of time in this hell upon earth.[42] The attack is usually unexpected; a person hitherto calm and collected will suddenly commence to shout, sing, and dance at the most inopportune moment, and from that time the mind of the patient becomes permanently deranged. A curious phase of this disease is the irresistible impulse to mimic the voice and actions of others. Thus I witnessed a painful scene one ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure, but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise from his chair and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to find her entrance thus inopportune. "I only wished just to be sure it was not ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but because he was so entertaining that everybody liked listening to him, whatever he denied or affirmed. Socrates, on the other hand, was evidently something of a bore, with a bore's unrelieved earnestness and inopportune persistence. His saying about "letting the talk lead us where it will," is an exact description of Johnson's practice, but nothing could be less like his own. He is always relentlessly guiding it towards a particular goal, from the path to which he will not have it for ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... of making like inopportune remarks when we are struggling to keep our hearts high. It seemed as though they were trying to break my spirit. My mother's white silence, my father's long prayer, James feverishly coming and going on that last morning—little things like these almost made me abandon my great ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been first on ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Russell met him. Eric felt the meeting inopportune; he was ashamed to meet his friend, ashamed to speak to him, envious of him, and jealous of his better reputation. He wanted to pass him by without notice, but Russell would not suffer this. He came up to him and took his arm affectionately. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... time. His tongue was decidedly Hanoverian, with its repetitions, its catchwords—"That's quite another thing! That's quite another thing!"—its rattling indomitability, its loud indiscreetness. His speeches, made repeatedly at the most inopportune junctures, and filled pell-mell with all the fancies and furies that happened at the moment to be whisking about in his head, were the consternation of Ministers. He was one part blackguard, people said, and three parts buffoon; but those who knew ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... inopportune moment to forget her father's presence, and the tragic nature of the occasion, and, in her usual impetuous fashion, flung her arms around Waitstill's neck and gave her the hug of ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hand aroused him; and in that instant her possible agency in the matter flashed upon him like a new revelation. She saw the tiger-like look which he fastened upon her, and she recoiled, perceiving at once that she had chosen an inopportune moment to speak to him. But it was now too late ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... your space due to the clash of opposing views of domestic politics is likely to be for the moment relaxed, you may, perhaps, not think it inopportune that attention should be recalled to a question of permanent international interest raised by the recent action of the Turkish Government in closing the ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... good for so short a time it wanted to prove by a shining example how it abhorred the lawlessness of its youth. At this inopportune moment Clanton gave himself up to be tried for the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... the doctor's devotion to Leon and Leon's to him were second only to the devotion of the dog and his mistress to each other, though, owing to the fact that Leon often stalked into his laboratory at inopportune moments, sometimes spoiling the most delicate experiment by poking his great inquisitive muzzle where it did not belong, the doctor's patience was sometimes tried almost beyond ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, they fix their whole affection there, and strive all they can to relieve the souls this way; and are by no means so lavish, as the fashion is, in other idle expenses and inopportune feastings, which are often more troublesome to the living than comfortable to ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... now be necessary to relate how the deputy happened to appear at such an inopportune moment for Simon. The planter, after awaiting the return of Simon for over two hours, was informed by the saloon keeper to whom he appealed, that he had entrusted his money to Simon Suggs, and that his chances of ever seeing ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... Vienna, I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned, and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put her off till an evil day, as frequently I am ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... caught you at it!" cried the happy father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson," ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... and hurry; a doctor to be sent for; a mind to be unburdened of directions for a dress to a forewoman, who was too ill to understand; scoldings to be scattered with no illiberal hand amongst a group of frightened girls, hardly sparing the poor invalid herself for her inopportune illness. In the middle of all this turmoil, Ruth crept quietly to her place, with a heavy saddened heart at the indisposition of the gentle forewoman. She would gladly have nursed Jenny herself, and often longed to do it, but she could not be spared. Hands, unskilful in fine ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... evil-tempered monster, a self-righteous person, full of self- approbation—in fact you were the Beast of this pious Apocalypse. Your friend Dr. Lind was an embittered and scurrilous apothecary, "a bad old man." But enough of this inopportune brawler. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... strange but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger, however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... deliberately and phlegmatically replied, "Fair damsel, at the present moment your request is inopportune, for I am debarred from involving myself in any adventure until I have brought to a happy conclusion one to which my word has pledged me; but that which I can do for you is what I will now mention: run and tell your father to stand his ground as well as he can in this battle, and on no account ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 1. Perseus hoped to eject the Romans from Greece completely, but through his excessive and inopportune parsimony and the consequent contempt of his allies he became weak once more. When Roman influence was declining slightly and his own was increasing, he was filled with scorn and thought he had no further need ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger and awe and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou should'st walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... reliability is the great requisite of the touring automobile, and, for that matter, should be of any other. Efficiency and reliability cover ninety-nine per cent. of the requirements of the automobilist. Chance will step in at the most inopportune moments and upset all calculations, but, with due regard given to these two great and fundamental principles, the rest ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... DEAR PUPIL:—Despite the fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task proved very little worth while, I write with double regret—my own time being ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... your childlikeness ... and your spirit of horse-play, that breaks through at the most inopportune moments, that encourages these fools to treat ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... skill the PRIME MINISTER managed to get the House out of its hostile mood and to satisfy the majority, at any rate, that the measure was neither provocative nor inopportune, but a necessary precaution against the possibility that "direct action" on the part of extra-Parliamentary bodies might confront the country with the alternatives of starvation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... their grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection. And they would accompany their affability with all manner of inopportune memories of the wars in which France had been conquered. Everything in Germany—a monument, a railroad station, a simple dining-room device, instantly gave rise to glorious comparisons. "In France, you do not have this," "Of course, you never saw anything like ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... police, had by this time introduced himself into the chamber, and watched the course of procedure from behind the chair of the president. He now leaned forward, and whispered into Hullin's ear, "this would be inopportune."—These significant words were obeyed. The court pronounced the duke guilty of the capital crimes of having fought against the Republic; of having intrigued with England; of having maintained intelligence with Strasburg, with the view of seizing that place; and of having conspired against ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... her with a certain severity, humbly took up the cards, and began to play again. But instead of this touching example of respect and submission making a grave impression on the onlookers, it provoked a smile of amusement on almost all their faces, and there emanated from some of them inopportune bursts of laughter that were only ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... and sometimes amusing anecdotes are told in connection with the inopportune visit. Thus not long ago the newspapers chronicled the plight of a woman who undertook to surprise an acquaintance from whom she had not heard for several years. She was driven to their house and dismissed the carriage. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate on the pending concurrent resolution. He approved the principle but doubted the expediency of now reaeffirming it. "I regard it," said he, "as a mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inopportune moment; the mere assertion of a naked right which has never yet been disputed, and never can be successfully; a mere assertion of a right that we have over and over again asserted. My idea is that the true way to assert this power is to exercise it, and that it was only necessary ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... other things, Father Juan Cobo said that when he returned here he would confer with the governor as to the advisability of not permitting a single Japanese to remain in the country. Antonio declares that Father Juan Cobo left Japon so quickly, and at a so inopportune season, because of his fears of the Japanese; and that he had previously agreed with this Antonio Lopez to send him to Hroguyaca, on the pretext that he was going to China, but with instructions to change his course at sea, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... plexus blow to American womanhood. The heroine marries a German prince, merely because he is a Prince, discarding her honest and true lover in a scoundrelly fashion, while her beautiful stepmother comes within an ace of surrendering her person to her son- in-law, and is prevented only by the inopportune arrival of her idiotic husband. It is all very "elevating," and a good thing to take your wife ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... came at a most inopportune time for the Wilson candidacy, and how to meet it was one of the most difficult problems that the Wilson forces had to face. Our enemies were jubilant. They felt that at last they had broken our lines and that we would not be able ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... also the fear of a confined area, the fear of a crowd, fear of loss of speech at an inopportune moment, fear of falling buildings, fear of being alone, fear of poison, fear of germs, fears ad nauseam. I have qualified in all of them and ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... curious, and not inopportune, to explain here how it came about that I succeeded in pleasing every one without intending it, without knowing it, and, as it were, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... as well be going," said Iris, hoping that her aunt would pass on and leave them to enjoy the tete-a-tete which she had interrupted at such an inopportune time. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as he smiled ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... flags. She let herself go dreaming Of Theodore her husband, and the tune From 'Orfeo' swam through her mind, but seeming Changed—shriller. Of a sudden, the clear moon Showed her a passer-by, inopportune Indeed, but here he was, whistling and striding. Lotta squeezed ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... and the House of Lords. At the great meeting in St. James's Hall in the summer of 1868 to protest against the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, some Orange enthusiast, in the hope of disturbing the Bishop, kept interrupting his honeyed eloquence with inopportune shouts of "Speak up, my lord." "I am already speaking up," replied the Bishop in his most dulcet tone; "I always speak up; and I decline to speak down to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery." Every one whose memory runs back thirty years will recall ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the facts as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... prepared the conditions for his birth. (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:4-6) Jesus was not born on December 25, as is generally supposed; but his birth occurred about the first of October. Midwinter would have been a very inopportune time for the shepherds to be watching their sheep in the fields and sleeping in the open. In addition to this circumstantial evidence, all the facts show that the birth of Jesus was in October, and that December 25, nine months previous, was probably the date ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... room looked at each other in consternation. Events had succeeded each other so quickly that no one had thought of providing against the contingency of inopportune visitors by saying Lady Gore was not at home. It was too late to do anything now. Miss Tarlton happily had no misgivings about her reception. It never crossed her mind that she could be unwelcome, especially to-day that she had brought with her ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... object has been sensibly influenced by the recollection of the little trifle that caught your eye at the first glance. What young girl victim of first impressions has not refused one or two husbands on account of a waistcoat too loose, a cravat badly tied, an inopportune sneeze, a foolish smile, or a boot too ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... corn dealers themselves incurred danger from the violence of the inhabitants. Corn was brought from Etruria by way of the Tiber: by means of this the people were supported. In such straitened resources they would have been harassed by a most inopportune war, had not a dreadful pestilence attacked the Volscians when on the point of beginning hostilities. The minds of the enemy being so terrified by this calamity, that they felt a certain alarm, even after it had abated the Romans both augmented the number of their colonists ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... kings of Scanderoon, A royal jester, Had in his train, a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The Court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest of folks his Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes. It needs some sense to play the fool, Which wholesome rule Occurred not to our jackanapes, Who consequently found his freaks Lead to innumerable ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... apologize, Sir George," he said, "for disturbing you at such an inopportune hour. Our business, however, made it necessary for us to reach you with ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that sought hers eagerly, and hands that were ready gladly with any little service that there was room to render. She was no longer troubled by a group of people dogging her footsteps; and she found now that there had been, however inopportune, a little excitement in that. It was very well they were gone, she acknowledged; for Mr. Caruthers might have come to like her too well, and that would have been inconvenient; and yet it is so pleasant to be liked! Upon ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at a most inopportune moment—pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski—I will not talk to her for another ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... seconds on one breath. For them to sing on one breath a rapid phrase lasting just as long, would be equally feasible. It is the slow emission of breath that gives to long, rapid phrases a smooth and limpid quality; and it is the taking of breath at inopportune moments, as badly taught singers are obliged to do, that makes such phrases choppy and ineffectual. This fault is never observable in artists trained in the real traditional Italian school of singing—not ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... the cabinet as to the course of conduct to be adopted. In the impossibility of instantly making up his mind upon this unexpected emergency, Philip fell, as it were, into a long reverie, than which nothing could be more inopportune. With a country in a state of revolution and exasperation, the trance, which now seemed to come over the government, was like to be followed by deadly effects. The stationary policy, which the death of Requesens had occasioned, was allowed to prolong itself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... contrasted strongly with the easy and becoming position adopted by the eighteenth—one who bore the unmistakable emblems of the Imperial army. In this brave and noble-looking personage Mian at once saw her preserver, and not doubting that an inopportune and treacherous death had overtaken him, she ran forward and raised him in her arms, being well assured that however indiscreet such an action might appear in the case of an ordinary person, the most select maiden ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... a few hard facts," she said, "now that the ice is broken. You will never be allowed to make full use of your own secret. You have arrived at an inopportune moment, for you and for us. Our plans have been on foot a long time. Our search has been systematic, and it is a mathematical certainty we shall find what we look for in time. We do not propose to let new arrivals on ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Balkan Wars.—Never in history had a more inopportune moment been chosen for such crying illegalities. For close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... favorable opportunities. Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective, or inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... suspicion. The statement was reported to the other, they held a conference, and some thought they had become reconciled. As a fact they understood each other's dispositions accurately, and, thinking it inopportune at that time to put them to the test, they came to terms by making a few mutual concessions. For some days they were quiet; then they began to suspect each other afresh as a result of either some really hostile action or ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... wouldn't act," said Dick. "We had just that second slowed down to examine it. You might have come along here to all eternity and not have been as inopportune."" "You take it very well." The big-coated apparition, in motor-cap with the ear-flaps down, and motor-goggles, and the suggestion of a rotundity about the centre, was not at all engaging to look at, but he had a ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... place; tried so hard that it was only kept under with great and painful difficulty; the reporters, the Brixtonites, and other strangers bent their heads down and shielded their faces with their hands, and managed to hold in by main strength and heroic courtesy. At this most inopportune time burst upon the stillness the roar of a solitary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Metropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or—share it with her.... But why not? He could readily ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... her heart. Carley essayed to sit up. "Oh, I'm afraid my anatomy has become disconnected!... Glenn, do I look a sight?" She never would have asked him that if she had not known she could bear inspection at such an inopportune moment. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... friends were disposed to bolt, but Mr. Clay promptly acknowledged the ticket, and it was elected. Then followed the death of the President in office, the obnoxious vetoes of the newly installed President—Tyler—the division of the Whig party, the nomination of Mr. Clay at this late inopportune time and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... my life," said Margaret Earle, with disdain. "I don't think I should care to faint out in the vast universe like this. It would be rather inopportune, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... of my passion for Spain, and kept finding out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when once more I sailed for Europe ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Now you have really started on your wedding tour in the belief of all London, and all outside of London who take the Times; and all our world do take it. And now, if any rumor of this most inopportune disappearance of our bride should get out, why, it will never be believed! That is all! For has not the departure of the 'happy pair' been published in the Times? Yes, I am very glad of the news reporter's indiscreet precipitancy on this occasion, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... he said to the lieutenant, "and stuff him underground. I am busy, I am absorbed in work. When I have leisure I will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought me nothing of the sort, and to-night, for example, you plump a Jew on my doorstep. Bury your beastly Jew and leave ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... very cordially welcomed. Mrs. French said she was afraid a patient would come to hand at an inopportune moment. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... shields with their spears (a custom which rouses the fury of the combatants, and strikes terror into their enemies), they filled the front ranks of the Isaurians with consternation. But as the troops were pressing forward eagerly to the combat their generals recalled them, thinking it inopportune to enter upon a contest of doubtful issue, when their walls were not far distant, under protection of which the safety of the whole army could be placed ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... and subtractions and much less frequently in the extraction of the most complicated roots, which again, in similar cases, such as "xenoglossy" and psychometry, is one of the eccentricities of human mediumism and is explained by the same cause, namely, the inopportune intervention of the ever fallible intelligence, which, by meddling in the matter, alters the certainties of a subliminal which, when left to itself, never makes a mistake. It is, in fact, quite probable that the horse, being really able to do the small sums, no longer relies solely ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma were continually taking place, and Ida seemed to be more frequently ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... early; the ladies had not long left the dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... silent. He was conscious that his lack of response seemed both sullen and awkward, but he was for the moment tongue-tied. His habit of inopportune self-analysis had once more asserted itself. He could not understand the curious nature of his mistrust of this woman, nor could he understand the pleasure which her suggestion gave him. He wanted to refuse, and yet he was glad ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... off they went, making the best of their way up the rivers. There were several other craft lying off the town, into which the inhabitants were crowding, with all their effects of any value, no doubt intending to go a little way up into the country also, to avoid the inconvenience of inopportune calls. The signal was made for our little squadron to get out their ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... is my brother's voice; A sound unwelcome and inopportune As was the braying of Silenus' ass, Once heard ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... intempestivity^, unseasonableness, inexpedience; unsuitable time, improper time; unreasonableness &c adj.; evil hour; contretemps; intrusion; anachronism &c 115. bad time, wrong time, inappropriate time, not the right occasion, unsuitable time, inopportune time, poor timing. V. be ill timed &c adj.; mistime, intrude, come amiss, break in upon; have other fish to fry; be busy, be occupied. lose an opportunity, throw away an opportunity, waste an opportunity, neglect an opportunity &c 460; allow the opportunity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... afterward a small party of staid Auld Lichts, carrying long white poles, stepped out of various wynds and closes and picked their solemn way to the house of mourning. Nanny Low, the widow, received them dejectedly, as one oppressed by the knowledge that her man's death at such an inopportune place did not fulfil the promise of his youth; and her guests admitted bluntly that they were disappointed in Tammas. Snecky Hobart's father's unusually long and impressive prayer was an official intimation ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... chosen a more inopportune moment. The hero, who had troubled Hugh's repose in the moist atmosphere of the city, persisted in behaving in an untoward fashion, even when translated to an altitude of three thousand feet or so. He still perorated, still posed like a shop-walker, still behaved like a puppet, with ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very heart; the majesty of the trees that covered ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... furniture borrowed from next door, and went down to break the news to Mrs. Fields. She found that person explaining with grim patience to the Peyton children why they could not make candy in her kitchen at the inopportune hour of ten ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... ill-treated by his wife's wealthy relations, who was soft in his manners and civil in his words, and never gave more trouble than was necessary. The period, too, would have been one of comparative prosperity to the Meager ladies,—but for that inopportune return of the head of the family,—as two other lodgers had been inclined to look out upon the dead wall, or else into the cheerful back-yard; which circumstance came to have some bearing upon our story, as Mrs. Meager had been driven by the press of her increased household to let ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... were turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in Bunhill Fields. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep Nan here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... to differ," protested Ramblethorne. "Corpses have a nasty way of turning up at inopportune moments. These youngsters are worth more to ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... defective, worried the genuine supporters of the bill not a little. The bill had been loosely drawn to begin with, and as originally introduced contained most unfortunate clerical errors, which bobbed up at most inopportune times. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... who arrived at so inopportune a moment was little calculated to smooth Joan's ruffled brow, being Charles, the eldest son of the Durazzo family. After he had introduced his fair cousin to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on various occasions ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... universal danger, ill at ease with herself and irritable with all around her. In her anxiety to hear about Adam—what message he had sent and whether she could not go to see him—she had barely patience to listen to Mrs. Tucker's roundabout details and lugubrious lamentations, and, choosing a very inopportune moment, she broke out with, "What message has Adam sent, Mrs. Tucker? He's sent a message to me, I'm sure: I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... The moment seemed inopportune for the delivery of my epistle: I endeavored to conceal it—without hypocrisy and by a natural movement—under the usual pile of manuscript on my table devoted to Progressive Geography. But the baron had spied his name on the address: "How is that? You were writing to me? There, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... note-book in hand, she commenced by saying: "Now Fillmore, I am ready to take up my series of questions about Solaris, which you have kindly consented to answer. I promise in advance to be good; to try to refrain from untimely interruptions, by asking a host of irrelevant questions at inopportune moments! ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. "There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... you, Brett, to constantly assume that I can see as far through a brick wall as you can, especially as you know quite well that, although I am fairly well acquainted with all that happened yesterday, the only tangible opinion I can offer is that the Paris police interfered with you at a most inopportune moment." ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... account for myself, sir," was the stiff response. "I was summoned here to perform a wedding ceremony which your most inopportune arrival prevented. I am a man of peace, not of war, yet I cannot and will not ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... sensation,—a 'feeling of goneness,' as the sufferer says—at the pit of the stomach, often attended by flushes of heat, commencing at the stomach and extending over the whole surface of the body. The face, neck, and hands are suffused at inopportune moments, and greatly to the annoyance of the sufferer. This is sometimes accompanied by a sense of fulness in the head, a giddiness, and dulness of the brain, sometimes going so far as to cause an uncertainty in the step, a slowness of comprehension, and a feeling as if one might fall at any ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... but the same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those 'reasons' brought to me 'for which he desired' me to be so good as not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do not then corrupt the Ambassador's letter. Nothing there of 'hostile spirit,' nothing of the 'inopportune time;' all he writes is that he 'is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so little moderation'—sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... quite low. Just at this moment Jimmy Anstice, with that exasperatingly inopportune way ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... about three miles, they came to a barricade of trees which had been fallen across the road. Back of this obstruction Mosby had formed a large part of his command, and our column was stopped by a heavy fire from carbines and pistols in their front and also by a flank-fire from the woods. At this inopportune moment Mosby made a charge which broke our column. The boys were driven back at a furious rate, and had not strength to rally. Some horses giving out, the hapless riders ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Erzinjan. From this, however, we diverged at Zara, in order to visit the city of Kara Hissar, and the neighboring Lidjissy mines, which had been pioneered by the Genoese explorers, and were now being worked by a party of Englishmen. This divergence on to unbeaten paths was made at a very inopportune season; for the rainy spell set in, which lasted, with scarcely any intermission, for over a fortnight. At the base of Kosse Dagh, which stands upon the watershed between the two largest rivers of Asia Minor, the Kizil Irmak and Yeshil Irmak, our road ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it would be no good waiting for their departure—here such gatherings almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that, after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished to ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at this inopportune humiliation, coming like a drop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously to Gansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above the usual pitiful standard—namely, that art is but a means of procuring soup, meat, and shirts." To another ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... salesman usually stands a much better chance if he writes ahead for an appointment. It is much more courteous to ask a man when he wants to see you than to drop in on him casually and trust to luck that the time is not inopportune. Some salesmen are afraid to write because they think the knowledge of what they have to sell will prejudice the prospect against it. At the same time they feel that if they can only get a chance to ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... had sent. General Wallace contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... hard times came upon the Franck family. The rich pupils, who formed the young men's chief clientele, all left Paris, alarmed by the forebodings of the revolution of 1848. Just at this most inopportune moment, Cesar decided to marry. He had been in love for some time with a young actress, the daughter of a well-known tragedienne, Madame Desmousseaux, and did not hesitate to marry in the face of bad times and the opposition of ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... minutes the Golden Butterfly was on the sward beside the crippled Cobweb. Mortlake's face was black as night. He fulminated maledictions on the young aviators who had appeared at—for him—such an inopportune moment. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed and backed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Lutchester remarked diffidently, "that my arrival seemed either opportune or inopportune—I could not quite tell which. Were you in any way troubled or embarrassed by the presence of the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,—the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... mater!" said Arthur kindly. "It's very tiresome of Peggy to disappear at such an inopportune moment, but no harm can have happened to her, you know. It's impossible! As I said before, she has probably some wild prank in her head of which this is a part. I'll give her a lecture when I catch her for spoiling dinner like this, and such an uncommonly good dinner too!" And Arthur smiled ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey |
